Windmill farms are proliferating
in Pennsylvania and other mid-Atlantic states, as modern wind turbines
generate clean energy . . . and profits too.

By Tom Gibson

Driving through the countryside, up and down hills
and past bucolic farm land replete with split rail fences, we come to
the top of Laurel Ridge above Cranberry Lake. Rain had fallen that morning,
and a foggy mist shrouds the mountain. We soon realize something else
is combining with this to create an eerie scene: a series of huge windmills
towering like statues along the ridge as cows graze below them.

A steady wind blows, and the windmill blades rotate slowly with a steady
hum and slight squeak. While we wait, cars stop, and people get out and
gawk at the huge airplane-like propellers. Mimi Abel, a summer engineering
intern with Zilkha Renewable Energy, drives up. Then comes Gary Verkleeren,
project manager at Zilkha. "Boy those things are cooking," he
observes as he looks up at the windmills.

This is the Mill Run Wind Project, recently built near the town of Mill
Run in southwestern Pennsylvania. Wind farms like this have started popping
up in greater numbers in the Mid-Atlantic, especially in Pennsylvania.
In years past, western and Great Plains states garnered the lion's share
of wind farms, but today, states east of the Mississippi account for the
majority of new wind projects. Brent Alderfer, an electrical engineer
and president of Community Energy, a partner in mid-Atlantic wind ventures,
says, "In 1999, Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic had no wind energy
at all, and we now have more than 100 megawatts coming online." That's
enough to power 38,000 homes.

The Mill Run wind farm and a sister one nearby in Somerset represent
the new breed of wind farms built as legitimate money-making operations,
not just for environmental reasons. Theodore de Wolff, an engineer and
owner of Atlantic Renewable Energy in Richmond, Virginia, reports, "Within
three months, the output of the Pennsylvania projects was sold out to
universities and private companies. So commercially, it has been successful."

Growing FastAs we met with Verkleeren and Abel for a tour of the site,
Verkleeren inquired, "What do you think about wind energy? Did you
know it's the fastest growing form of energy?" Sure, it offers the
obvious environmental advantages. But mainly, windmill technology has
improved, and costs have dropped, making wind power among the least expensive
new sources of electricity. Since 1980, the price of wind power has dropped
from 40 cents per kilowatt-hour to 4-7 cents today, only slightly higher
than fossil fuel and well below the 20-cent cost for solar electricity.

Between
1981 and 2000, windmills improved in power output by 125 times while increasing
only 20 times in cost. As Alderfer says, "That's the story of the
rapid worldwide expansion, particularly in more moderate wind regimes
like Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic, New York, and New England. It's
basically taller towers and longer blades, so a bigger rotor comes on
at much lower wind speeds. Rotors have diameters of over 200 feet and
very thin blades, so they can come on and generate power in as low as
8 miles an hour of wind. That kind of technology really brings down the
price because you can harness that much more of the wind."

Meanwhile, machines have become friendlier to their surroundings, as
well, in response to early-generation models that annoyed neighbors and
killed large numbers of birds. Towers consist of tubular steel with fewer
perches for birds, and slower-rotating rotors kill fewer of them. Tubular
towers, usually painted off-white or gray to blend with the sky, also
prove quieter than the lattice structures previously used. Verkleeren,
project manager for the Mill Run and Somerset sites, notes, "One
thing that surprised me most is how quiet they are."

So why build wind farms in Pennsylvania and surrounding states? Alderfer,
explains, "The simple answer is, that's where the people are. The
challenge is how to bring renewable energy on line where we use the most
energy, which is the Northeast. The Mid-Atlantic is where I grew up, so
I have an interest in the environment here as well. Pennsylvania is ground
zero for acid rain, as it has some of the highest acidity levels in natural
rainfall thanks to coal plants in Pennsylvania and to the west. So it's
a good place to start."

More than most states, Pennsylvania has shifted to a deregulated power
market, and many consumers are choosing to support renewable energy. Alderfer
says, "It's all based on customer demand. We grow only when we find
customers who will support wind energy, and the more sign up, the more
turbines we put up. That's our simple formula."

The most productive wind energy regions generally fall in mountain or
coastal terrains, with the northern portion of the Appalachian chain --
southwestern Pennsylvania, western Maryland, and the West Virginia panhandle
-- among the areas with the highest potential. The mountain ridges of
Pennsylvania, also including the Poconos in the eastern part of the state,
offer some of the best wind resources in the East.

As Theodore de Wolff, says, "Of course wind power has disadvantages.
We can provide power only when the wind is blowing. Therefore, wind power
can only be combined with power from fossil resources -- coal and gas
plants -- or other renewable energy forms." To get around the problem
of wind variability, wind mill output feeds to the main electrical power
grid spread throughout the country. Sophisticated power electronics make
the output of turbines at Mill Run and other projects suitable for grid
interconnection and distribution.

A Complex EffortBringing a windmill project to fruition involves many companies
working together as a team.Zilkha Renewable Energy and Atlantic
Renewable Energy partnered to build and operate the Mill Run and Somerset
wind farms. Atlantic served as the early-stage developer by locating the
site and arranging permits and interconnects, while Zilkha provided financing.
Based in Texas, Zilkha was originally involved in marketing fossil fuels
such as oil and natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico. Atlantic specializes
in developing wind projects on the east coast.

As we stroll up the access road to the first windmill, Verkleeren explains
how he's a civil engineer by training who went to Penn State. Before this
job came along, the Pittsburgh native worked at consulting firms doing
geotechnical work and foundation design. He was living 15 or 20 minutes
away when he heard about the Mill Run and Somerset projects coming to
the area. Seeing a unique opportunity, he contacted Zilkha and Atlantic
about working for them. "I told them I'm the ideal person you need
for this job." He started out consulting for them, arranging local
permits, and then they hired him fulltime a year before construction began.
After he managed construction, "They thought I could pick up the
operational aspects and then run it, and it's worked out that way. You
can learn anything if you're really interested in it," Verkleeren
recalls. "I always had an interest in renewable energy, going off
grid and all that."

Because of the tremendous upfront costs associated with huge windmills,
projects only become feasible after a customer such as a large utility
makes a long-term commitment to purchase the energy output. Exelon Powerteam
made a 20-year agreement to buy the power produced by the Mill Run and
Somerset projects wholesale. Exelon Corporation, Powerteam's parent, ranks
as one of the nation's largest electric utilities and the largest nuclear
power plant operator.

Based in Wayne, Pennsylvania, Community Energy Inc. (CEI) markets clean
energy, and under its New Wind Energy brand, it partners with existing
electric suppliers such as Exelon to make wind-generated electricity available
to commercial and residential customers. In this case, CEI brought in
pioneering customers including several colleges such as the University
of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon University, and Penn State as well as
Philadelphia Suburban Water Company and grocer Giant Eagle.

Having
grown up in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Alderfer founded Community
Energy with a partner in 1999. This came after he got an electrical engineering
degree and then went to law school and practiced law for more than 16
years. "Towards the end of that practice, I got more interested in
my engineering roots," he reveals. "For me, making a difference
in the environment in an engineering field I like took me right to the
new renewable energy technologies like wind. It was coming home for me."
As a lawyer, he represented small to medium-sized companies in litigation
and finance transactions and worked with startups putting entrepreneurial
ventures together, so now he finds himself combining his backgrounds.

Walking further up the hill toward its crest, Verkleeren remarks, "It's
always windy up here. At the top of this hill, we'll be at 3000 feet."
Coming to another windmill, he opens a hatch at the base of its tower,
and we walk inside as if venturing into a submarine, only one standing
on end. "It's 23 stories straight up," he tells me as we stare
up the tube that forms the tower.

Having overseen construction at Mill Run and Somerset, Verkleeren has
become an authority on the work involved at a windmill construction site.
It initially meant building gravel roads to accommodate trucks carrying
up to 190,000 pounds, counting the monstrous windmill nacelles (the generator
unit at the top with the blades). Much of the engineering comes from the
turbine manufacturer, who sends engineers to the site. Construction firms
are of the type that build highrise buildings or roads for state transportation
departments. The construction phase usually takes six months to a year.

The most complex phase of construction comes with building the concrete
foundation for each turbine. Usually 30 to 40 feet in diameter, these
use standard concrete construction, but sometimes with a twist. When bedrock
lies in the earth below, the foundation can extend 30 or 40 deep and anchor
on it. The Somerset project was built on reclaimed mining land with soft
overfill, so they used a much broader foundation that floats on the softer
soil. Verkleeren says each foundation has 180 to 200 yards of concrete
and 50,000 pounds of steel reinforcing bar in it.

Prospects Look BrightTheodore de Wolff at Atlantic Renewable Energy says prospects
for future wind energy projects in the Mid-Atlantic look bright. "Wind
power will probably continue to grow strongly in the years to come."
Projects on the drawing board bear that out. Near Scranton, Pennsylvania,
the 60-megawatt Pocono Wind Farm will be the largest wind farm in Pennsylvania,
creating enough energy to power over 20,000 homes. In Tucker County, West
Virginia, the 65-megawatt Backbone Mountain Wind Farm will take shape
as the first wind farm in West Virginia and the largest east of the Mississippi.
Both should come online later this year. Other projects are under development
in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

All
this should mean more work for engineers like Verkleeren, although the
job of windmill engineer and operator isn't always as glamorous as it
may seem. "It's very demanding. It's a 24/7 job," Verkleeren
says. He has to cover both sites, Mill Run and Somerset, about 20 miles
apart. "You're on the road all the time." And he deals with
a host of issues that arise between the multitude of partners involved
in playing a new game in the utility arena. But he says, "It's still
fun. I like doing my job every day."

Fortunately for Verkleeren, he has the help of Mimi Abel for the summer.
Having just graduated from Penn State with a B.S. in electrical engineering,
she relates, "I was looking for something interesting for the summer.
I found it." Her main job consists of studying computer programs
used with the windmills and the data coming from them to put it in a better
format for usability and daily logging.

As we wrap up the tour and head back down the ridge, Abel reveals she
plans to go to UCLA to graduate school in the fall to study atmospheric
science, specifically changes taking place in the atmosphere. Verkleeren
sees this as fitting because scientists link changes in the atmosphere
to fossil fuel power plants common in Pennsylvania and midwestern states,
and here companies are generating energy that should result in a cleaner
atmosphere. All the while, the farmer's cows can exist side-by-side with
the monolithic but quiet windmills, and local citizens can marvel at them.

Let's Get Technical:
Details on the Mill Run and Somerset Wind Projects

The Mill Run project in southwestern Pennsylvania uses ten GE Wind Energy
turbine generators, while the Somerset project uses six. Each turbine
costs $1.5 million and is rated at 1.5 megawatts at 25-mph wind speed.

Each windmill has a tower height of 210 feet and rotor diameter of 231
feet, making them some of the largest commercial wind turbines in the
country. The blades consist of fiberglass with a steel frame.

The rotors use blade pitch regulation and variable-speed operation to
allow the turbines to generate more power at higher winds, keep the turbine
at maximum efficiency, and minimize turbine drivetrain loads. Continually
adjusting the blade pitch angle achieves optimal rotational speed and
maximum lift-to-drag at every wind speed. It also provides active damping,
resulting in less tower oscillation compared to constant-speed turbines.

Being variable speed, the turbines aren't synchronized to the electrical
grid, so they have a pulse-width modulated frequency converter that shapes
the AC output voltage to match the grid. A transformer at the base of
each turbine steps up the voltage for transmission to a substation. All
lines from turbines run underground.

The nacelle, or unit with rotor and generator, tracks the wind based
on information it receives from a computer-based weather station. The
computer calculates average wind speed and the length of time it blows
in various directions to determine the optimum direction for orienting
the windmills. This way, it doesn't continually chase every slight wind
change. Windmills shut down at 55 mph.

The turbines use a programmable logic controller for remote control and
monitoring.